MISSION BIRMINGHAM

A fairer, more equal and just Birmingham.

We are on a mission to help build a fairer, more equal and just city through people, place and open movements.

We are actively trying to shift the paradigm of how change happens, and we work every day to create a sustainable business model that is systematically aligned to our mission.

We are many things all at the same time, just like the city we call home.

Mission Birmingham is a social movement, a culture and a way of being, doing and thinking. It is an ambition for what we want our city to be - experimental, inclusive, focused on research, resistance and collective care. Mission Birmingham values outcomes more than attribution - supporting, platforming, enabling and celebrating resilience, courage, and tenacity. There are lots of ways you can be part of Mission Birmingham including joining as a member,hosting events, or getting involved in our three main areas of work: Creative Resistance, #RadicalChildcare and DemoDev.

Our Mission Areas

Creative resistance is at the heart of our approach, working with artists, designers and creative ways of thinking to challenge, be curious and make a live version of what the world could be about. We continually seek to invest in, grow skills and build open infrastructure and resources for artists working at the intersections of cities, systems and social justice to make Birmingham the home of radical, transformational creative outcomes, putting these practitioners and methodologies at the heart of building the city.

#RadicalChildcare is an initiative to explore, imagine and invest in bold new possibilities for children and families. We work with parents, grandparents, professionals in the sector, commissioners, policy makers, educationalists, entrepreneurs and more to test and develop radical solutions to enable 21st century children to thrive. #RadicalChildcare advocates child friendly approaches to urban planning and development, championing and investing in imaginative models for future practice.

DemoDev uses the power of data to make finding land easy, quick and transparent, putting citizens at the heart of a strategy to tackle the UK housing crisis through building homes enabled by new technologies and covening an impact movement nationally.DemoDev will link the built environment directly to neighbourhood outcomes and giving people the opportunity to build their own homes, whilst hosting a strong voice on the need for inclusive, democratic and citizen-centred development at scale across the city.

Mission Birmingham Foundations

We believe a part of making future cities is to re-imagine, convene and build place-based movements of change, composed of many actors - a wide range of people and organisations across public, private, charitable sectors and more - working in a decentralised, distributed and democratic capacity.

Over the past five years Impact Hub Birmingham has been an ambitious, boot-strapped, experimental, heartfelt R&D version of a home for Mission Birmingham. Now it’s time to take the next steps to build the town hall of the future by taking what we know, building upon what we know works and humbly putting down what doesn’t, growing in scale, ambition and focus.

Towards the end of 2018 we will be announcing a bold new step in the future of Impact Hub Birmingham, so watch this space for what's next. We also invite you to explore more deeply the earlier work and thinking up to this point within our Mission Roadmap, Maker Manifesto and more linked below.